Discussion: How Can We Handle Botting Better?

[KageTokage]

You can't do anything against bots from the gill sellers. This is such a big business that they keep comming no matter what a company does.

They could, honestly.

The gil farm bots abuse several flaws with how the game is designed, such as the enemy AI in dungeons/trials never resetting and walls only having LoS on one side. If they fixed either of those, they wouldn't be able to complete dungeons or quest properly which would effectively shut down their ability to farm gil. They wouldn't even need to make sweeping changes in this regard, since fixing just Satasha would wall off their progression, since they can't kill bosses if they can't go out of bounds to avoid their attacks, whether due to LoS issues or the boss resetting because it can't reach them.

That wouldn't stop the "legit" gil farmers who make their money with gather/crafting bots, but they're a minority compared to the mass-produced hackers.

[Ilan]

They could, honestly.

The gil farm bots abuse several flaws with how the game is designed, such as the enemy AI in dungeons/trials never resetting and walls only having LoS on one side. If they fixed either of those, they wouldn't be able to complete dungeons or quest properly which would effectively shut down their ability to farm gil. They wouldn't even need to make sweeping changes in this regard, since fixing just Satasha would wall off their progression, since they can't kill bosses if they can't go out of bounds to avoid their attacks, whether due to LoS issues or the boss resetting because it can't reach them.

That wouldn't stop the "legit" gil farmers who make their money with gather/crafting bots, but they're a minority compared to the mass-produced hackers.

Do you really think that just these stupid bots exist that we have? There are enough advanced bots out there to avoid even that not to mention how much money SE would have to invest just to find different bots afterwards not to mention if its even possible with their game code. The fight against bots from professionals is not the one that they could win.

[Jijifli]

Do you really think that just these stupid bots exist that we have? There are enough advanced bots out there to avoid even that not to mention how much money SE would have to invest just to find different bots afterwards not to mention if its even possible with their game code. The fight against bots from professionals is not the one that they could win.

Is it that horrible though for Square to trust its own report feature a little bit?

When I see a specific botter for over a year, it's annoying. They show the obvious signs, I am not the only person reporting them, yet nothing is done. Just stick a gm on the person for 5 minutes when they start going around and boom, they can see it (In this case, the short teleport they looooove to do).

[Risvertasashi]

It's kind of pointless to even try to disrupt them as they mostly have fail-safes enabled that will ensure their scripts start working properly the moment they're left alone.

Some people really don't have any idea how to properly identify bots and might just use faulty methods such as "Selling too much stuff on the marketboard" as a reason to be suspicious of somebody.

You're very right, but I do have a big problem with people that trample over normal players because they think they've found a bot (and, obviously, are wrong).

It's also why trusting reports too much would lead to false positives.

I think there is some merit to "let a GM observe this person teleporting for 5 minutes" after enough reports. But if they start disguising their behavior well enough... anticheat software is, in the long run, the only way SE might make a real dent in it.

[Ilan]

Is it that horrible though for Square to trust its own report feature a little bit?

When I see a specific botter for over a year, it's annoying. They show the obvious signs, I am not the only person reporting them, yet nothing is done. Just stick a gm on the person for 5 minutes when they start going around and boom, they can see it (In this case, the short teleport they looooove to do).

Oh i did not say that. I was also not happy how SE handled things with a botter i reported, but i honestly stopped to care since they obviously ignored my report and everyone who has two eyes could see it was a bot who was mining there. :shrug:

[KageTokage]

Do you really think that just these stupid bots exist that we have? There are enough advanced bots out there to avoid even that not to mention how much money SE would have to invest just to find different bots afterwards not to mention if its even possible with their game code. The fight against bots from professionals is not the one that they could win.

The most "advanced" things I've seen bots do is move out of AoEs and run away from something if they get low on HP. They're still obvious as all heck by their movement patterns, though.

But as far as gil farmers go, I seriously doubt they would be able to farm effectively if they couldn't position hack to warp to their destinations and hide in the air/ground so enemies can't hit them as there's too many random variables present in some quest duties/boss fights for a bot to actually account for. XIV's heavily client-sided nature basically excludes trying to fix their hacking, but it could still be circumvented by making all enemy AI able to detect when a player is at an unreachable location and reset, because they already do this in HW/SB zones if you try to attack them from a location they can't find a valid path to.

Some people have actually gotten matched with gil farmers for Cape Westwind via roulette and the bots will just float in the air and nuke Rhitatyn while he stands there doing nothing.

[van_arn]

The only option Square has at its disposal is to compete with the botters where it counts: gil. Either they offer an officially-sanctioned method of obtaining gil for cash, or the botters continue to provide a service some people pay for.

The only reason bots exist now is there are enough people willing to purchase gil, no matter what the consequences may be to their accounts.

Square meets that need itself, or the "black market" does. There is no third option.

[Jijifli]

The only option Square has at its disposal is to compete with the botters where it counts: gil. Either they offer an officially-sanctioned method of obtaining gil for cash, or the botters continue to provide a service some people pay for.

Could do the WoW taken system. Make it an item people can buy, then you put it on the MB at a fixed price. Then players hand in the item for Crysta, so they can buy a subscription or mog station items with it.

[Ilan]

The most "advanced" things I've seen bots do is move out of AoEs and run away from something if they get low on HP. They're still obvious as all heck by their movement patterns, though.

But as far as gil farmers go, I seriously doubt they would be able to farm effectively if they couldn't position hack to warp to their destinations and hide in the air/ground so enemies can't hit them as there's too many random variables present in some quest duties/boss fights for a bot to actually account for. XIV's heavily client-sided nature basically excludes trying to fix their hacking, but it could still be circumvented by making all enemy AI able to detect when a player is at an unreachable location and reset, because they already do this in HW/SB zones if you try to attack them from a location they can't find a valid path to.

Some people have actually gotten matched with gil farmers for Cape Westwind via roulette and the bots will just float in the air and nuke Rhitatyn while he stands there doing nothing.

Just because you've seen only this doesn't mean the other stuff isn't there. The point is that SE won't change their stuff anyway because it costs money. Sure they could just put up a game guard or some other crap, which would just agonize the normal players while bots will still run because they work around it anyway.

[KageTokage]

Just because you've seen only this doesn't mean the other stuff isn't there. The point is that SE won't change their stuff anyway because it costs money. Sure they could just put up a game guard or some other crap, which would just agonize the normal players while bots will still run because they work around it anyway.

The silly thing is that they've already tried to take measures against them in the past, with one update mentioning that "Items in certain dungeons have been relocated to discourage illicit activity"...except I'm not sure how that would help at all when the bots can just teleport wherever they want.

Like I said, all they'd actually have to do discourage the gil farmers is update the dungeon/trial enemy AI to have the "reset if cannot reach target" function on them. The AI routines already exist on overworld enemies, so they'd just need to port them over, basically. The only way the bots would be able to counter that is by creating scripts that can fight bosses normally as they wouldn't be able to go out of bounds without causing them to reset, which would force them to be subjected to their attacks and there's no way THMs/BLMs can face tank dungeon enemies/bosses past the first few.